GREENFIELD - The Franklin Regional Council of Governments is looking for a bigger venue after an Open Meeting Law complaint forced it to postpone a meeting scheduled for Thursday on issues surrounding the Tennessee Gas Pipeline.

The meeting, which is co-sponsored by the Franklin Regional Planning Board, was set to take place at the John W. Olver Transit Center, which can accommodate about 100 people, until Northampton attorney Michael Pill filed a complaint with the state Attorney General's Office saying the public would effectively be excluded. Pill, who is known for his legal work surrounding land rights, said he represents a land trust with concerns about the pipeline. Although his client does not wished to be named at present, Pill has a contract with the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, which works with private and public landowners throughout Western Massachusetts to preserve conservation land.

The pipeline, which would be built and owned by Kinder Morgan Inc. of Texas, would carry natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico into New England. Locally, it would extend from New York through Berkshire, Franklin and Worcester counties. A number of communities it would transect have passed resolutions banning the pipeline. The Northampton City Council, as a show of solidarity, will vote on a similar resolution Thursday, although the pipeline would not run through that community.

According to Richard Wheatley, director of corporate communications for Kinder Morgan, the pipeline will supply utilities and corporate customers, but not private residences. The company hopes to begin the $2-3 billion project by 2017 and have flowing by 2018. The pipeline would run from Wright, N.Y., to Dracut and be some 250 miles in length, including offshoots.

Many oppose the pipeline because the gas it carries would be extracted through fracking, a process that involves fracturing rock deep beneath the surface to extract gas and other petroleum products. Environmentalists say that process results in problems such as air and water pollution. Wheatley said the gas in the pipeline would come from a variety of sources.

"We don't control where the gas comes from," he said.

The pipeline would also require a right-of-way up to 125 feet, a concern for property owners and conservationists.

"That's a huge swath of land," said Pill.

Pill said Wednesday that the meeting at the Olver Center amounted to a de facto executive session that would have excluded the public.

"They don't want opponents of the pipeline," he said. "The Open Meeting Law is clear. You don't exercise what amounts to prior restraints."

If the Council of Governments provided electronic access to the meeting or at least seated the public on a first-come, first-serve basis, they might have avoided the complaint, Pill said. Bill Perlman, the chairman of the Franklin Council of Governments Executive Committee, said the meeting was organized to get more information on the pipeline from Kinder Morgan.

"The council has not taken a position on the pipeline," Perlman said. "We don't have enough information. I want to make sure the decision we make is based on facts."

Representatives from the Franklin County towns that belong to the council, some of which have publically opposed the pipeline, would have been present, Perlman noted. However, he did not dispute that the meeting would have violated the Open Meeting Law.

"It applies," he said. "We were wrong."

The council is looking into bigger venues, perhaps at Greenfield High School or Greenfield Community College, but has yet to reschedule the meeting.